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| Sourced from the E. L. Moore Archives |
In the E. L. Moore eBook I pieced together the story of how the model and kit of F & M Schaefer Brewery came to be as it was the first of the AHM plastic kits based on Moore designs to be produced. The second kit, the Ramsey Journal Building, has no detailed paper trail in the archive documenting the development of the kit, but there are some letters that give us a look into how the model came to be.
Hal Carstens, editor of RMC at the time, was in the habit of bouncing ideas for model projects off Moore. In a 28 June 1967 letter to Moore, Carstens bounced the idea for a model of RMC’s then headquarters, the Ramsey Journal Building:
…How practical would be a model of the old brick structure that was in the RMC Dec. 1965 center fold in the Wallworth painting? And in which our office is? The front would be the roughest part. One side (left) is plain brick with no windows and butts against another building. Railroad side has mostly simple windows not shown in the photo or painting, but for which data is available. Rear has since been added to, but what was plain brick with a coupla windows, data for which is available. Tower is gone. Be kinda big but cute…
In the margin of the letter, Moore hand wrote this note to himself as he pondered the model’s design:
Much too big as seen in painting - I would say 25x40 and 30’ high excluding tower. Would put clocks in tower - what suggestions as to lettering over lower front? Instead of Vanderbeck Drug Store (Railroad Model Craftsman maybe) or whatever? Who needs data on side windows or rear unless unique?
I guess Moore did some further thinking about the model’s design and bounced some ideas of his own off Carstens in this extract from a 3 July 1967 letter to him:
All that palaver but it’s too much trouble to research waterfronts right now and easiest things first: so, I got out that two page center spread of the Wallworth painting — no research, no nothin’ but build it. And it ain’t so big as seen in the picture which is in HO scale — say, 25’ x 40’ and 30’ high excluding tower. Would put clocks in those vacancies up there, OK? The upper front would take just a little doing. Of course there’s a difference in doing it and doing it so the average modeler can follow without rupturing his sleen (spleen). Made a little trial on it yesterday and have it just about ready to put in place when I build the rest of it. Sunbursts of chalk. Tower doesn’t present any particular difficulties. JOURNAL at top I suppose, but what of the lower lettering — RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN, maybe? Where the Vanderbeck Drug Store or whatever is. Sides no problem, just windows — rear maybe a large door and platform out to siding, and usual windows. I’ll put queries on separate card. Then lay siding and only show one main track blocking rest out with train if necessary in photograph from left.
The next relevant letter I came across is one from Carstens to Moore dated 22 July 1967. It starts off:
What freight elevator? You’ll find some more photo of the “Dater Building” in the July 1963 RMC. Not too good for the side tho. Tsk.
I don’t know exactly what prompted Carstens to mention a freight elevator. I can’t find a letter from Moore to Carstens that mentions including a freight elevator, even though the model eventually did have one. I suspect Moore did send Carstens queries on separate cards as he noted in the 3 July letter (meaning he sent Carstens questions about the model on postcards - at times they did exchange postcards, so there is a precedent) and one was about an internal freight elevator.
At the end of the 22 July letter Carstens notes:
Ok, no Austrian on the Journal Bldg. There goes my bottle of slivovitz. Heh, if you’d drink one of his bottles of slivovitz, you’d make him a whole dang town.
Once again, I think there is some missing correspondence, but I interpret the above to mean that there had been some discussion between Carstens and Nikolas Pfusterschmid - the Austrian being referred to - about turning the Ramsey Journal Building model into an AHM kit. In the eBook chapter on the AHM plastic models I discussed the possibility of Pfusterschmid, a well known leader in model railroad plastic kit marketing and product development of the time, being the catalyst for the creation of the Original 9 E. L. Moore kits. The only other reference I’ve seen about the development of a Journal building kit was in a letter from AHM’s Peter Van Dore that it would be one of the next ones produced after the Brewery.
The next mention of the Ramsey Journal Building model is in the 25 July 1967 cover letter to Moore’s typescript for the W. E. Snatchem funeral parlour model:
Old Journal building is completed except for lettering other than JOURNAL which is in place. If with drug store below, furnishings are ready to install with colorful window display. Second floor office fully furnished, lights installed. Them four clocks up in the tower really set it off . . . I’ll run up a flag on the flag staff before I photograph it.
It appears Moore quickly went from a suggestion by Carstens to finished model in about a month. It must have been strenuous because he concluded the above letter with this:
Well pardon me while I go out and lie in my hammock a while . . . . .
On 13 August 1967 Moore submitted the article’s typescript and included this note in the cover letter:
Well here ’tis, looking a bit like the painting, such as shows. Damned telephone poles got in my way so I slapped ‘em down. My Porter hadda do to pull the passenger train being as I don’t have much to choose from.
You can see in this post’s lead photo that the telephone poles that appeared in the painting have been eliminated.
And that’s the story - or what’s left it - of the creation of the Ramsey Journal Building.
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